Draught horses will return to the plough, the show ring and the grand parade at Barellan’s Good Old Days Festival this long weekend. Photo: Barellan Working Clydesdales “The Good Old Days” Weekend/Facebook.
On Thursday, two old-style flatbed wagons stacked with wool will roll out of the tiny Riverina settlement of Moombooldool, one behind a team of bullocks and the other behind camels, and make the 10-kilometre walk to neighbouring Barellan.
It’s the sort of sight that once belonged on a Riverina stock route, and this week it’s the opening act for Barellan’s Good Old Days Festival.
Before trucks and tractors, the Australian bush was built on the backs and strength of working animals: horses that ploughed the paddocks, bullocks that hauled wool and supplies across vast distances, and camels that carried loads through country little else could cross.
The Good Old Days Festival honours that contribution, and the people who keep those skills alive, which means that from Friday 2 October, Australia’s largest gathering of harnessed draught animals – the Clydesdales, Australian Draughts, bullocks, camels, donkeys, mules and goats that helped write Australia’s history will share one showground, a mix, organisers say, no other festival in the world can match.
However, there’s more, with the bullocks and camels out to add a new chapter and Australian records in their sights.
Friday belongs to the town, with the parade rolling down Yapunyah Street at 11 am, scones at the CWA Rest House and visitors at the showground watching bullocks being yoked, learning how camels are harnessed or having a go at cracking a whip.
The highlight is the “Barellan Special”, in which a bullock, horse, camel, donkey and mule pull together as one team.
At 3 pm the Bendigo Bank Billy Boiling Championships hand each entrant a tomahawk, a block of wood, one box of matches, a flattened drink carton and 600 ml of water and start the clock, and that night the best bush beard competition takes over the Commercial Hotel stage.
Saturday starts with bush poetry over breakfast before the horses head into the ring, where Matt Fitzgerald’s four-horse Clydesdale team will work a plough while others pull vintage machinery through the crop area, mowing, harvesting and chaff cutting in jobs that once took a team and most of a day.
Blade shearer Lionel Garner will shear a sheep blindfolded, while shearer and wool classer Ken “Panda” Wilson will show visitors how to throw, skirt and roll a fleece, and axeman Ron and Steve McKinnon, Rod Sirl and Rohan Morris will demonstrate tree felling, underhand, standing block and crosscut sawing, post splitting and shingle splitting near the forge.
Across the weekend, masterclasses cover using pack horses with Brad Taylor and side saddle riding with Vanessa Wells, there’ll be whip making, butter churning, a dairy demo, and an animal nursery, scone making plus working and high jumping dogs. If you want to toss a sheaf – this is your chance, or maybe make a rope or ride a carriage, or a camel.
The records come at 3 pm, after the grand parade and during the Tribute to the Teams, when the harnessed animals are paraded in honour of the nation-building teams of the past.
Last year, 62 heavy horses pulled a Bennett wool wagon and load weighing 10.2 tonnes, setting Australian and world records, and now the bullocks and camels want their turn.
Bullockies Phil Thomson, Ron McKinnon, Matt Stanford, Rohan Morris, Darcy Quinn and Joey Reedy will combine their animals to pull a loaded six-tonne wagon in an attempt to beat the 21st-century Australian record of 40 bullocks, set at Barellan last year while the crowd’s eyes were on the horses.
Cameleers Rodney Sansom and Peter Hodge will try to better the Australian record of 22 camels harnessed to a loaded wagon, a mark Sansom and his team set in 2024.
The camel attempt has drawn visitors from overseas, including Doug Baum of the Texas Camel Corps and Valeri Crenshaw of the North American Camel Ranch Owners Association, who will give talks and demonstrations while they are in town.
For Valeri, who’s at the festival for the first time, the wagon ride is a long-held wish.
“Riding on a wagon, especially one pulled by so many camels, has been on my bucket list for quite a while,” she said.
There’s the Barellan Hobby Horse Championships for little and big kids, a Teamsters Dash, Jackaroo and Jillaroo barefoot sprint and junior and senior tug-o-war competition.
As the arena quietens on Saturday evening, visitors can toss their hat in the ring for the best rural hat competition or try their hand at gum leaf whistling before Danny Phegan and the Longreach band take the stage, with bush poet Geoffrey Graham performing during the band break.
A camp oven dinner under the stars, which has grown from feeding 120 people to about 650, is sold out this year, but barbecues, hot food and lighter meals will be available elsewhere at the festival.
Sunday opens with another bush breakfast at 7:30 am, followed by an obstacle course for single horses, mules and donkeys from 9 am and a ploughing competition at 10 am in which they are joined by bullocks and camels.
The day is as packed with activity as Saturday, so maybe that’s the time to take in the Riverina Light Horse display, yoke a bullock or watch the traditional chaff cutting and the outback stockmans show.
The goat teams will compete for the Little Teamsters Trophy, and the grand parade and a second Tribute to the Teams close the weekend before the gates shut at 5 pm.
None of what this festival has become was planned.
For Barellan’s centenary in 2009, locals brought vintage machinery, horses and bullocks into the street and about 3000 people turned up, so they did it again the following year, when 17 draught horses pulled a wool wagon.
By 2014 the festival was drawing more than 5000 visitors, and last year it drew 10,000.
The Barellan Working Clydesdales committee, made up of volunteers, runs the event and reinvests the money raised in community infrastructure, and it estimates the festival contributes more than $1 million to the regional economy.
Beyond the showground, organisers have mapped a town tour to follow on foot, by bike or by car, taking in the grain silos, the practice wall where a young Evonne Goolagong Cawley hit tennis balls and the giant racquet unveiled for the centenary.
The Good Old Days Festival runs from Friday 2 to Sunday 4 October at Barellan Showground, and although online ticket sales have closed, admission and camping tickets can be bought at the gate.
